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After rumors circulated that such a move was imminent, Microsoft has confirmed that it is indeed shifting from its EdgeHTML back end to Chromium, the open-source project that powers Google Chrome. In confirming the rumor, the company also said it expected this shift could allow it to introduce Microsoft Edge to macOS. Joe Belfiore, corporate…
Mobile giant Verizon has faced withering criticism in the months since it throttled Santa Clara County Fire Department firefighters trying to contain California’s Mendocino Complex Fire, then tried to force them to purchase increased data even as they were begging for immediate assistance. It said it would immediately stop throttling emergency personnel responding to wildfires…
It’s been quite a year for Mark Zuckerberg and his friends at Facebook. You might even say that 2018 has been the single worst year in the company’s history. But you wouldn’t know it by reading “Facebook’s 2018 Year in Review.” The annual blog post leaves one with the impression that Facebook’s involvement in global…
Subscription movie theater service MoviePass gained massive popularity last year by offering something so simple and sensible it was unavoidable: a movie a day for 10 bucks a month. But that plan didn’t work for MoviePass’s bank account, and it started bleeding cash and customers. Now, it hopes to make a comeback by… making things…
Thanks to the Windows on Snapdragon initiative, Qualcomm has been dabbling in the laptop processor business for about a year now. And while systems like the Asus Nova Go and Samsung Galaxy Book 2 have their share of flaws, those laptops demonstrated the potential benefits of ARM-based chips through things like seriously good battery lives,…
The founders of Predictim want to be clear with me: Their product—an algorithm that scans the online footprint of a prospective babysitter to determine their “risk” levels for parents—is not racist. It is not biased. “We take ethics and bias extremely seriously,” Sal Parsa, Predictim’s CEO, tells me warily over the phone. “In fact, in…
Automation is killing jobs Automation is the future Automation is good Automation is bad Automation is coming Automation is inevitable According to one of our most infamous and widely experienced automated features, the searching masses are divided—or being divided, maybe—over just what it is that automation is doing. Still, if you want to take a…
Allo is the latest casualty in Google’s long and tired road to building a chat app that can rival Apple’s iMessage. After passing on further Allo investment back in April, Google officially announced this week that it’s pulling the plug on the chat app in March 2019. Are we surprised? Not really. Google’s always made…
Last week, the Marriott hotel group disclosed that it had been the victim of what’s shaping up to be the second biggest data breach of all time. Few details have been made public on who might be responsible for the theft of data from 500 million guest records, but Reuters reports that investigators believe espionage…
When the Apple Watch Series 4 shipped a few months ago, its electrocardiogram feature was still in the works. Not anymore. Apple just released its watchOS 5.1.2 update, which adds the highly anticipated ECG app. While users have already been able to get notifications about irregular heart rhythms, the ECG will take things a step…
If you’ve ever been disappointed by the performance of a Nerf toy, you’re not alone. For safety (and legal) reasons the blasters come with limited power out of the box, but there’s a thriving community of modders online who’ve found ways to give them more kick. That includes Peter Sripol who hacked a Nerf blaster…
Today the Chinese government called for the release of Meng Wanzhou, an executive at Chinese electronics maker Huawei after she was arrested in Canada last weekend while transferring flights. Meng reportedly faces extradition to the U.S. for allegedly violating American sanctions against Iran. Meng is not only the chief financial officer of Huawei but the…
Dozens of Amazon workers at one of the company’s fulfillment centers in New Jersey were hospitalized after an aerosol can containing bear repellent was hit. The incident occurred at the company’s Robbinsville fulfillment center and left at least one person in critical condition. The Washington Post reported that the incident occurred Wednesday at around 8:50…
Facebook’s board of directors appears to be sticking to the script in the defense of its opposition research into George Soros, a vocal critic of the platform. In a letter reported Wednesday by the Wall Street Journal from Facebook’s board of directors to Patrick Gaspard, the president of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the company…
Over 12,000 Uber drivers found a way to weaponize the ridesharing platform’s restrictive contract in what’s possibly the funniest labor strategy of the year. But first: a bit of background. One of the more onerous aspects of the gig economy is its propensity to include arbitration agreements in the terms of service—you know, the very…
Google is rolling out Chrome 71 today and with it, you can apparently expect to kiss abusive ads from “persistently offending sites” goodbye. The latest version of Chrome will also include billing warning screens to help prevent unwanted charges and subscriptions. Google’s definition of abusive advertising falls under lots of different categories. Generally speaking, they’re…
It’s hardly a novel concept for parents to spy on their kids, but a new device is troubling for just how big, ugly, and shitty it is: an ankle monitoring service that tracks troublesome teens. The company, Florida-based Tampa Bay Monitoring, provides parents with what it claims is a nearly untamperable ankle bracelet for their…
Yesterday, Qualcomm announced the name of its next big mobile chip—the Snapdragon 855 (Surprise!)—but didn’t say much about what it could do until now. And while innovations in mobile processors can often seem opaque and difficult to follow, advances in tech between generations are the kind of things that give phones the biggest increases in…
Back in 2015, Facebook had a pickle of a problem. It was time to update the Android version of the Facebook app, and two different groups within Facebook were at odds over what the data grab should be. The business team wanted to get Bluetooth permissions so it could push ads to people’s phones when…
The road ahead is rocky for those hoping to build quantum computers, according to a new report from the National Academy of Sciences. But as these computers become possible, the government should prioritize preparing for the potential consequences, which could be dire for cybersecurity. Physicist Richard Feynman first proposed a quantum computer in 1982, and…
